In a Hostile Country: The Saga of Cahmel (Let’s Play Morrowind, Part 40)

EDIT: The screenshots for this one aren’t uploading, for some goddamned reason or another. Luckily, they’re not terribly important, but I’ll put them up once I figure out what the issue is.

A note on screenshots: I don’t post enough, as you are all aware. This is partially because it takes me like two minutes to upload one screenshot–the process of finding it, going to upload image, switching to browser view, waiting, uploading, waiting, resizing, waiting, and then captioning it because the caption doesn’t show up if I do that in any other step is a tedious one indeed. Still, I ought to suck it up more often.

When we last left our hero, he was basking in the considerable profits that only catastrophic failure can produce. Now, before you think I’m a heartless profiteer, you should know that most of this money isn’t actually going into my pocket. The lion’s share of the swag is going towards the friends and relatives of my fallen comrades, the better to support their families and honor their memory.  So at the end of the day, I’m really just making a small … wait, sorry, what’s that? The mercenary’s a mysterious loner and my rat’s an orphan, so neither of them have families to donate to? You don’t say. Hm. Well, I guess I still have to pay to bury them…oh. No, I forgot, their bodies are still down there. I’m guessing by now, the assassins have already dragged them into some nook of the sewer to fester in solitude. That’s kind of like getting buried, in some respects. I suppose it will have to do.

What else do I have to do to make it look like I cared about those guys? I’m really at a loss as to what places I could be putting the money in to at least have a pretense of respectability, here. Maybe I could support their favorite charities? I guess I’ll throw a Suran stripper a few drakes and give the next rat I see a bit of cheese, right before I have to hack it open in self-defense. That should cover my bases.

So, it appears that these profits are going straight into my pocket. I guess that makes me a heartless profiteer? Eh. I can work with that.

Anyway, the money is going to get divvied up into the various considerations of my adventuring budget. I draw up a relatively simple plan of distribution: twenty-five percent for potions, fifteen for repairs, thirty percent to bulk up my enchantment fund, ten percent towards towards training, fifteen towards traveling, five towards bastard taxes, and what’s left I’ll spend on hiring allies in the future. It’s a good plan, and actually pretty responsible resource management. It’s just a shame that it’s total fiction, because I know damn well I’m just going to go find a trainer, hunker down, and push my stats straight up until I’m too broke to afford half a piece of scrib jerky. Learning is a goddamned addiction. I would gladly enter a program to help me with my training problem, but only if I could pay for the lessons in intervals, each more expensive than the last.

What else to do while I’m in town? I guess I could go trawling for quests, like the violent homeless traveling handyman that I am. I generally consider a day wasted unless I’ve  risked my life running a trivial errand for a total stranger, all in exchange for roughly the same wages I’d get flipping guar burgers in some unspeakable Dunmer roadhouse. Not that it was any better when I was in Hlaalu, mind. I prefer strangers giving me stupid errands to overly-familiar sex offenders giving me stupid, illegal errands.

I wander around the temple a bit, and come across a rather unusual fellow.

Chap goes by the name of Gaenor, and he appears to be a beggar. Our conversation starts off innocently enough: he asks me for a pittance, and since I’m currently using gold coins as pogs, I give him a few.

Obviously detecting that I have a kind soul, he presses me for more—still not very much, only a single bastard tax’s worth. I give it to him.

From here, he presses on to an outrageous extent. The little bastard actually asks me for 1000 drakes. Obviously, I’m not about to give some random stranger such an absurd chunk of coin, so I move on, making a mental note never to give anyone anything, at any time, ever.

As I leave, he starts shouting at me, cursing my name and calling me a miser. What an ungrateful little turd. I entertain thoughts of taking him on a tour of scenic Old Mournhold, whether he wants to or not, but when I turn around the fetcher’s vanished. Good riddance.

You are a tiny, angry man.

I start wandering around the city some more. Most of the work’s already dried up. There’s a shell game in the basement of one of the inns, which is either very rigged or else karma is coming back to bite me. There’s a quest involving the acquisition of valueless items, or “clutter,” but the day I undertake that nonsense is the day I quit adventuring and become a personal assistant. And then there’s a few young men wandering around saying, “Boy, I sure am looking for a girlfriend, but not very hard! If somebody should happen to know an eligible bachelorette who’s looking for love, that’s exactly the kind of information I would be very interested in and pay nothing for!” Too late, guys, she won’t talk to me now. Matchmaking office is closed. He’s a thought: try talking to a woman sometime so I don’t have to manage your love life like some sort of goddamned meddling mother figure in a bad RomCom.

Basically, I’ve cleaned this town out, except for the really big and crucial assassin quest that I’m apparently not a bad enough dude to undertake. Fan-dabby-dabulous. I think it might be just about time to blow this town.

I hang around for a few more days, just to see if I’ve missed anything. I check the bazaar, the plaza, the palace—nothing solid. Finally, I hit the temple area.

Huh, that’s new. There’s an NPC there dressed in very fine, very expensive ebony armor. Nice weapon, too. Wonder if he has any quests for me?

As it turns out, he does. The quest is entitled Karma, the objective is to get hacked open, and the quest reward is a painful, sobbing death.

Guess what? The guy in the armor is Gaenor.

Apparently, the guy bounced back from poverty pretty quickly. He’s armed for bear, but he’ll settle for redguard—he’s come back here to get his just revenge upon my inglorious hide, because I had the unthinkable temerity to refuse to give him a very large amount of money. Which is, in his world, a crime punishable by death. Then again, his is the world where he’s got the nice sword and armor, so maybe I’m not in a position to criticize it.

Alright, don’t panic, he’s still just a beggar, nice gear or not. How hard could this fight be?

Oh, I don’t know. Let’s ask the TES Wiki!

…he will then attack you on sight. He is one of the toughest opponents in the game due to his armor and abilities, including his very high Reflect and Resist Magicka, constant health regeneration, high skills, Strength, and incredibly high Luck.

Toughest. Opponent. In the game.

Sure enough, he taps me with his sword once and I die instantly.

This is not going to go well, is it.